


Walk Walk Fashion Baby

by punkfaery



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Canon Compliant, Fluff, Gen, Gender Issues, Genderfluid Character, Misunderstandings, Nonbinary Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-26
Updated: 2018-03-26
Packaged: 2019-04-08 10:25:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14103339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/punkfaery/pseuds/punkfaery
Summary: Fade spirits don't really "do" gender.





	Walk Walk Fashion Baby

**Author's Note:**

> i just really wanted to write nonbinary cole, so i did! rafi is my lavellan and he looks like this http://punkfaery.tumblr.com/post/159502226372/punkfaery-punkfaery-ayyyy-guess-who-just

Cole’s been hanging around (ordinarily one might say _living,_ but that’s not accurate for a variety of reasons) in Skyhold for several weeks before Rafi starts to notice certain…oddities.

Perhaps that’s the wrong word. He’s never spent much time around spirits before. Perhaps what’s odd to him is completely normal to them, and vice versa. He knows there are certain things that simply aren’t part of their daily existence – like sleeping, or eating, or getting sick, or ageing, or any of the other essential bodily processes that one might associate with being mortal. With that in mind, it’s strange that it takes him so long to notice that Cole never changes his clothes.

He’s not really sure how to bring it up, or whether he even needs to. Cole wears his body absently, with the air of someone who threw on the first warm jacket to hand when the weather took a turn for the worse. Personal grooming is not so much a low priority as a completely foreign concept. Thinking back now, Rafi recalls the time a few weeks back, during dinner, when Cole had put a hand under his hat and brought it back out with a small grey mouse cupped in the curve of his palm, eyes bright and beady. “He likes to be warm,” Cole had said simply, in response to Sera’s shriek, and Rafi had let it go. Sometimes you had to choose your battles.

Now, though, seems as good a time as any. They’ve been wandering around the Hinterlands for days, because apparently being the Inquisitor _doesn’t_ release him from the obligation to go out and collect supplies like a down-on-his-luck botanist, and conversation has slowed to an exhausted minimum. Cole is wandering a little way away from the group, and Rafi calls him over. He approaches with that curious swaying motion, the gait of a sailor who’s been away so long that he’s almost forgotten how to walk on land.

“What is it?” he says, drawing level.

Varric is watching with curiosity. Rafi hasn’t mentioned this to him – to anyone. Hasn’t felt the need to. But: “Have you ever thought about wearing something…different?” he asks.

Cole looks at him as though he’s a bit strange. “Why would I?”

“Well, you know,” Varric says, “most people tend to change their clothes occasionally. Every day, in some cases. It’s a whole thing.”

“The way different things fit together,” Cole says. “The colours. And the shapes…I don’t understand it. Aren’t clothes for wearing, not looking?”

“You’ve obviously never been to an Orlesian masquerade,” Dorian calls from up ahead, without turning around. “I met a lady once who needed seven attendants to get her in and out of her dress. I mean, even _I_ don’t need that many. I did ask her whether it got complicated when she needed to go to the bathroom, but I don’t think she heard me.”

“A mask could be nice,” Cole says, thoughtfully. “The sun hurts my eyes sometimes. And it’s good for – for not being recognised.”

Varric snorts. “We’re not giving you a mask, kid. You scare people enough as it is.”

Cole looks downcast. “I don’t mean to.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Rafi says. “You’re fine. But really, you’ve never wanted to try something different? A new jacket, maybe? One with pockets?”

“I have pockets.”

“They’ve got holes in.”

Cole sticks one hand in the pocket of his breeches. They all look down at the pale fingers sticking out of the hole, nails encrusted with grime and bitten down to the quick. “That’s true,” Cole says, as if he’s never noticed before. “But they let the air in quite nicely.”

Sighing, Rafi gives up. The world has bigger problems right now than one Fade spirit and his questionable fashion choices. What with an old god rising from the ashes seemingly bent on world domination, and the templars going all crazy in the head and trying to eat each other, and red lyrium sprouting up left right and centre, and Leliana brooding and Cassandra having a crisis of faith and Solas skulking around in his cubby-hole doing Maker knew what…. Rafi pinches the bridge of his nose, fighting off the headache that’s threatening to emerge. Yes. Much bigger problems.

Still, he wonders.

 

* * *

 

Matters come to a head about three weeks after that.

Cole doesn’t tend to smell – aside from a faint dampness, which isn’t entirely unpleasant and only discernible when you get up close. But blood, especially in large quantities, is a different story altogether. The sun is hidden behind clouds, but the air is muggy, humid, and Rafi has to resist the temptation to pull his scarf up over his nose and mouth. The others are all right, as staves and crossbows tend to place their owners well out of spattering range, but the fact remains that there’s no clean way of gutting somebody – especially not for Cole, who attacks with a physiological accuracy that borders on the uncanny. (Actually, everything about Cole borders on the uncanny.) Rafi breathes through his mouth, doing his best to focus on walking.

“Iron. Salt. Bad meat and old fish. You don’t like it.” Rafi starts; he’d thought Cole was much further back, but his shoes are soft-soled and his footsteps quiet, almost soundless on the fine white sand. “I can’t take them off,” Cole says, coming up next to him. “I don’t have anything else to wear. And I don’t think it’s a good idea to not wear anything. People get upset.”

“Could you please not do that?” Rafi says, as politely as he can. They’ve talked about the whole ‘narrating people’s internal monologues’ thing, but somehow the message never quite seems to stick. It’s part of the reason why even the most tolerant folk never feel entirely at their ease around Cole – the idea that their innermost thoughts could be cheerfully rattled off at any moment, like a mildly creepy shopping list, is not always easy to get used to.

From what he can see of Cole’s expression under the brim of his hat, he looks vaguely shamefaced. “I am…sorry. It gets mixed up. Voices inside and outside all sound the same. It won’t happen again.”

“About the clothes thing,” says Rafi. “We might have something back at Skyhold. You can wear something else for a bit, just while we get the blood out of these.” Noticing the stubborn set of Cole’s shoulders, he relents slightly. “Fine. You can keep the hat. But the rest has _got_ to go.”

Cole smiles, just a faint twist of the mouth, and explains, “I like this hat.”

“We’ve noticed,” Varric says. “Now, can we save fashion advice for later? _Much_ later? I’m kinda distracted by the fact that I’ve got sand in places it really shouldn’t be.”

“Fucking tell me about it!” Sera is on one leg, working her boot off; when it comes free, sand showers out. She pulls a disgusted face. “Next time you feel like going back here, you’d better not bring me. I’m gonna be washing this stuff out of my bits for _weeks.”_

“Please stop talking,” says Rafi.

“Hey, I only said _bits._ I could have said – ”

“Oh, look, I think I see a dragon,” Rafi says, and darts off ahead into the cool shadow of an overhang, trailed by the sound of Sera’s laughter.

 

* * *

 

Cole vanishes soon after they get back to Skyhold.

Not _literally,_ or at least Rafi doesn’t think so. Cole’s tried to explain it to them before – how it’s not a matter of disappearing, but simply of ensuring that other people stop noticing you. Of fading into the background, like a piece of old wallpaper. It was easy enough to do once you’d got the knack of it, he’d said, sounding mildly puzzled that not everybody functioned the same way. But that’s all irrelevant; he’s gone, and none of them notice until they’re halfway up the stairs to the main hall and Rafi turns to ask Cole a question and finds himself confronting empty space. Dawn is just creeping over the horizon, lavender-coloured, and the air is rich with the smell of newly mown grass.

“I bloody hate it when he does that,” says Sera. “Anyone up for a drink? It’s still technically night, yeah?”

“So long as you can’t see the sun, it’s night,” Varric says. “You coming, boss?”

This last is addressed to Rafi, and he has to decline. There’s nothing he’d like more, but the world isn’t so kind as all that, and reaching home doesn’t always mean that the adventure is over. With a heavy heart Rafi leaves them to go for his regular debriefing, which is (as expected) long and thorough and almost as tiring as the mission itself had been. By the time it’s finished the sun is just past its zenith. Stumbling slightly, he makes his way to the tavern. If there was ever a time for some spiritual cleansing (read: alcohol), it’s now.

He finds Sera and Varric – with the surprising addition of Dorian and the less surprising addition of the Iron Bull – clustered in Sera’s room. When Rafi enters they look up with an interesting variety of expressions, ranging from horror (Dorian) to hilarity (Sera). “What’s happened?” he asks, closing the door behind him.

“We found Cole,” says Dorian, in the tone of someone announcing the death of a very close friend.

Rafi joins them by the window and peers out.

Cole is in his usual spot on the battlements, perched precariously on a broken bit of rooftop. He’s changed his clothes. A skirt, Vivienne’s by the look of it, made from a pale floaty sort of material, flutters when the wind catches it. Skinny ankles are visible underneath the embroidered hem, and below that a pair of Orlesian-style high-heeled boots, embroidered with crystals and clearly about three sizes too big. The whole ensemble is topped off by a sort of hooded cape, knotted at the neck and lined with some sort of fur (it’s probably fake; Cole has never much liked the idea of wearing animal skin next to his own), and the hat. Of course the hat.

“Oh,” Dorian says, turning an anguished face towards them. “Oh, this is bad. This is very, very bad. We’ve got to stop him from going around like that.”

Sera frowns at him. “What’s wrong with a skirt? I mean, look at us. I’m wearing trousers, you’re wearing your flashy dress – ”

“Sera, for the last time, this is a robe, not a dress.”

“Same difference! They’ve both got skirts and they both make you trip over when you try and run anywhere in ‘em. Anyway, my point is – it’s all the same, innit?”

“Not sure everyone in Skyhold is gonna feel that way,” Iron Bull muses. “But hey, so long as he’s comfortable.”

Dorian looks, if possible, even more frantic. “It’s not the _skirt,”_ he says, as though trying to communicate a fact so patently obvious that they should all have realised it ages ago. “It’s the _shoes._ They were selling those in Orlais decades ago. _Decades!_ If he goes out like that, he’ll be the laughing stock of all of Thedas. Plus they’ve got absolutely _no_ capacity for insulation. He’ll freeze before he’s gone half a mile.”

They all look at each other. Sera shrugs and knocks back a skinful of foul-smelling ale, then hiccups. The Iron Bull pats her on the back, nearly knocking her out of her chair, and follows suit.

Rafi says, after some consideration: “This sounds like a job for Leliana.”

“Ah, you’re probably right,” says Varric. “What the hell is in this stuff? It tastes like crotch.”

The Iron Bull snorts. “Trust me. You don’t wanna know.”

Leliana has a lot of shoes. Rafi has not previously been aware that so many shoes existed in the world. He stares, overawed, as she rifles through the shelves, tutting and clicking like some sort of demented bird. “He can’t have any of these,” she says, pointing. “They’re only for best. But _these_ are all right.”

 _These_ are a pair of flat ankle boots, made from soft leather, with pointed toes and buckles up the sides. Leliana assures him, with unquestionable authority, that they will be the right size. “Is there anything else?” she asks.

He’s about to say no, but her face is glowing, alight with possibilities. He can’t remember if he’s ever seen her this enthusiastic before. “Actually,” he says, “have you got any…dresses?”

“Ah. Also for Cole, I suppose,” she says.

“Ah. Yes.” Feeling powerfully awkward, Rafi scrubs a hand through his dark hair. “Sorry. I…I know it’s strange.”

She blinks at him. “Why is it strange?”

It’s a perfectly simple question. But nothing has been as simple as it should be, lately, and Rafi finds himself struggling for the right words, his logic failing him at every step. “Well. Because. Because he’s not a girl, I suppose.”

“How do you know?”

Rafi opens his mouth. Then he closes it again.

“What colour were you hoping for?” says Leliana.

“Red,” Rafi says, defeated. Cole seems to like red, insomuch as he likes anything.

When he gets up to the battlements, far more out of breath from the winding steps than he was while trekking through the desert wastes of the Forbidden Oasis, he finds Cole sitting in the same spot as before, staring down at passers-by with the intensity of a child watching a newly-caught bug run in circles inside a glass. Rafi wonders what he’s thinking.

“The Iron Bull had sex with both of those women sitting on the steps over there. At the same time.”

“What?” says Rafi.

“What I’m thinking. You wanted to know.”

“Oh. Of course. Um,” and Rafi deposits the basket of commandeered clothes down next to him, with the ankle boots on top. “I got you these?”

Cole frowns down at the basket. “More clothes. I don’t have to wear them all at once?”

“No,” says Rafi. “Generally, you change them every day.”

“Every _day?”_

“Well, that’s not strictly true,” says a familiar voice. The Iron Bull’s horns appear at the top of the steps, followed swiftly by the rest of them. He plucks at the baggy trousers that hang around his waist, held up by a tattered rope belt. “Haven’t changed these babies for close on four months now. If it ain’t broke, so they say, then don’t fix it.”

“I could have gone my whole life without knowing that,” Rafi says sadly.

The Iron Bull smacks him on the shoulder in a way that feels inappropriately cheerful. “You’re welcome, boss.” He sits down on the ledge that runs alongside the parapet. “So. How are we getting along here?”

“We’re not,” says Rafi. He turns to Cole. “Listen – there’s something I want to ask you, just while I remember.”

“Yes, I know,” says Cole. Which is somehow a lot less reassuring than it sounds.

Rafi inhales. This, he thinks, is going to be a complicated discussion, any way you slice it. “Cole, are you…I mean to say, you’re a boy, aren’t you?”

“I’m not quite sure what you mean,” Cole says. “Most people here don’t think I’m properly a person. How can I be a boy if I’m not a person?”

“Oh, you’re definitely a person,” Rafi tells him. “No doubt about that.”

Cole nods, slowly. “I’m glad you think so.”

So that’s sorted _that_ one out. Now for the difficult bit. “Well, then. Are you – do you – oh, Maker, I don’t know how to do this. Cole, is there anything in particular you’d like me to call you?”

“My name would be nice,” says Cole, sounding faintly bemused.

Rafi hisses a breath out through his teeth. This, he thinks, is why Josephine advised him never to become an ambassador. He’s sure he’s messing all this up terribly, although Cole doesn’t seem to mind his stammering and blundering too much. “Not…really what I meant,” he says. He wonders if spirits even have the concept of gender. Solas would probably know, because the amount of things that Solas _doesn’t_ know could probably be written on a very small leaf. He clears his throat. 

Thankfully, The Iron Bull comes to his rescue. “He means, are you a he or she? Or something else, maybe? Not really sure about how the whole spirits thing works, to be honest, but I’m guessing you guys do things differently.”

“Not ‘it’,” Cole says. “I don’t like ‘it’.”

The Iron Bull snorts. “Not sure anybody does.”

Rafi thinks that he should have a word with the others about that. About “it”. Not that it’ll do much good with Sera – imperatives don’t go over well with her, especially when they’re coming from a place of authority. And whether he likes it or not, he is an authority now. Or people see him as one, which is pretty much the same thing. Cassandra might be more amenable. “So anything except ‘it’ is fine,” he says. “And you’re…you’re definitely not a girl? Just, you know. Checking.” 

“Can’t be,” says Cole, blinking up at him. “Girls have long hair.”

“Not all of them,” Rafi says. “I mean, Cassandra’s a girl – well, a woman. Isn’t she? And she doesn’t have long hair.” There’s probably a better argument than that out there, but he can’t be bothered to think of it.

“Cassandra’s a _girl?”_ says Cole, in the voice of someone who has just found out that he has a skeleton inside his body _right now,_ and is more than a little bit upset about it.

The Iron Bull heaves a deep sigh. “This might be a little harder than we expected.”

For the first time in a while, Rafi smiles. It feels unexpectedly easy, like slipping on an old coat you thought you’d outgrown.

“Actually,” he says, “I think it’s going to be fine.”

 

 


End file.
